


Phone

by tornyourdress



Category: Grey's Anatomy, Private Practice
Genre: Angst, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-09
Updated: 2020-06-09
Packaged: 2021-03-03 18:40:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24620206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tornyourdress/pseuds/tornyourdress
Summary: After Derek's death, there's only one number Meredith will reliably answer.
Relationships: Meredith Grey/Addison Montgomery, Meredith Grey/Derek Shepherd
Comments: 8
Kudos: 52





	Phone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bobbiejelly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bobbiejelly/gifts).



> For bobbiejelly, for reminding me how much I LOVE this pairing. :D <3

When she runs away, checks out from her life for a bit, however you want to think of it, she does not answer her phone. 

Maggie calls. Pretty much every day. And Amelia’s name turns up often. Alex. Cristina. Even Bailey and Webber try a couple of times. 

“What do you _want?_ ” she hisses at her phone, because it feels too demanding, too much. How is she supposed to have a _conversation_ with these people whose lives are going on when she can barely manage the basic staying-alive stuff, like eating enough (eating for two, now) and keeping Zola and Bailey safe. 

It’s embarrassing, sometimes. She’s supposed to be over the hard times. The Meredith disaster years. But this is harder than anything she could have ever imagined. 

It is harder than anything other people can imagine. She can’t handle Maggie’s sympathy and concern; Amelia’s attempts at bonding over a mutual loss; Alex and Cristina telling her she’s strong like they have a fucking _clue_ what she’s like anymore. 

But when ADDISON MONTGOMERY appears on her screen, she takes the call. Every time. 

Sometimes they talk about Derek. Swap stories. It’s easier now that he’s gone. They’re not in competition anymore; any scraps of memory are better shared. Sometimes they talk about work, about medicine. About malpractice, once, and that night they stay on the phone for hours, both knocking back drink after drink, taking turns to be furious/upset and soothing. 

Sometimes they talk about mothers. Bizzy and Ellis. They wonder if the two would have gotten along; promptly decide they wouldn’t have. Too damn similar. 

They talk about their Susans, their fake mommies – the Susan who was Bizzy’s secret lover for decades, the Susan who married Thatcher Grey. The Susans who died too soon. Meredith forgets whether it’s her or Addison who makes a snarky comment about how they’re lucky their names aren’t Susan, that they won’t leave behind a heartbroken mess of a human. 

Meredith knows there is something gone awry with Jake; even drowning in pain she can pick up on that. But she does not have the fortitude yet to bring it up with Addison. 

They talk about their children. Addison asks Meredith the question Meredith suspects she can’t ask anyone else: does it feel different, to have one of ‘your own’, a child that grew inside _you_ instead of someone else? And Meredith is honest in a way she would never be with anyone else: it is different. And it isn’t. Your kids are your kids. 

By this stage she’s grown big and she puts her hand over her belly and imagines, foolishly, a world where Addison would deliver this baby, and how somehow they would cobble together a happy ending of their own.

But it’s not safe, anymore, to imagine happily-ever-afters. Once she arrives back in Seattle, she blocks Addison’s number. 

She introduces Ellis to the world. She reconnects with her people. She goes back to work at the hospital. She tries not to scream.


End file.
